Posts From Author: pulp fiction

Curtain Call: Meet Our Special Guests

It’s now just five days till our opening gala, “Plays with Matches”, and now seems a good time to bring all our hosts and special guests together. So, without further ado… Meet Andy Borowitz, our host, talking here about sex education and the difference between “continuously” and “continually” at the 92nd Street Y: “I guess I failed to ask a key follow-up question because I came away from this explanation thinking that all this transpired between a man and a woman while the couple was asleep. And it wasn’t until years later that I realised that one of you has to be awake…” Andy will be joined by Hollywood superstar Uma Thurman, who hosts our literary quiz, “The Tip of My Tongue”. Here’s Uma sharing a $5 milkshake with John Travolta in 1994’s Pulp Fiction. “I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna go to the bathroom and powder my nose. You sit here and think of something to say…” Storytelling collective The Moth has featured writer Adam Gopnik as a guest several times. Here he is in 2006 on how he learned to LOL. “…and I thought to myself, This is the real nature of every communication between parent and child: we send them […]
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The Luminous Uma Thurman

In 1991 the New York Times marked the “earth-shattering news” that Pauline Kael was retiring by interviewing her. The great iconoclast of film criticism, whose put-downs made her unpopular with publicists but delighted readers of the New Yorker for more than twenty years, nevertheless found much to admire in the latest crop of Hollywood stars. She listed among her favourites Tim Robbins, Annette Bening, Uma Thurman, John Cusack and Wesley Snipes. That this is a list of some of the most significant screen actors of the two decades since Kael’s retirement is a testament to her uncannily splendid taste. That it features one of the special guest hosts for the House of SpeakEasy’s opening gala — Uma Thurman — is merely delightful coincidence! On the night of the gala, Uma Thurman will be leading guests through “The Tip of My Tongue”. The Oscar-nominated actress will read out selections from three mystery books, all carefully chosen to reflect the theme of the evening (“Plays With Matches”),  and invite the audience to identify the title, the author, and the decade in which the books were written. The winner will receive signed books from the authors appearing at the gala. Thurman began her acting career at seventeen, four […]
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